[UPDATED!] D&D Beyond: An Official D&D Digital Toolset & Character Builder

D&D Beyond has just been announced! Coming this summer, and billed as "Your digital D&D source", it has a compendium of official content, character builder and manager, the ability to use home-brew content, D&D forums, and is usable on any device. A 1-minute announcement trailer can be seen below. D&D Beyond is produced by a company called Curse Inc, owned by Twitch. Right now, there's a signup for the Beta version. More info as/when it becomes available! [UPDATES: The D&D Beyond folks have offered some more info, which I have included below; I will be chatting with them later this week, with luck!]

"We are excited to announce development of D&D Beyond, an official digital toolset for use with the Dungeons & Dragons fifth edition rules. We have partnered with Curse to take D&D players beyond pen and paper, providing a rules compendium, character builder, digital character sheets, and more—all populated with official D&D content. D&D Beyond aims to make game management easier for both players and Dungeon Masters by providing high-quality tools available on any device, empowering beginners and veterans alike!" goes the official description.

"D&D Beyond speaks to the way gamers are able to blend digital tools with the fun of storytelling around the table with your friends,” said Nathan Stewart, Senior Director of Dungeons & Dragons. "These tools represent a way forward for D&D, and we’re excited to get them into the hands of players soon!"

The company, Curse Inc., is owned by Twitch, and is based in San Francisco, with offices in various countries. They produce tools and communities for gamers - up until now, mainly video games. They started as a way to organise the founder's World of Warcraft add-ons about 10 years ago, and grew into a multinational company from there. The company makes a desktop app called the Curse Client, along with community driven wikis, tools, guides, and databases for games like Minecraft, Diablo, Countersrike, Overwatch, and more. In 2016, it was announced that Twitch would acquire Curse.

Features, from the website, include:

• D&D Compendium with Official Content
• Create, Browse, & Use Homebrew Content
• Manage Characters - Build, Progress, & Play
• D&D News, Articles, Forums, & More
• Access Anywhere, Anytime, on Any Device

That last item makes it sound like it'll work offline, which will be a popular move. And the home-brew content mention is also important, especially because WotC supports DMs Guild.

UPDATES: I checked with WotC's Greg Tito who confirmed "D&D Beyond will work without an internet connection. That's a big deal for the devs!"

Adam over at D&D Beyond confirmed a little about the pricing model:

"At launch, players will be able to access SRD content and build and view a small number of characters with a free D&D Beyond account.

We don’t have exact pricing nailed down, but you will also be able to buy official digital D&D content for all fifth edition products with flexible purchase options. You can pay only for the D&D content you need. If you only play fighters, for example, you’ll be able to just pick up the stuff you need to track swinging that giant two-handed sword.

A small monthly subscription will be needed to manage more than a handful of characters and to enable more advanced features, like homebrew content integration. At this time, we don’t know exactly how much the subscription will cost."

He also confirmed that the pricing structure is not about microtransactions: "I'm about to get on a plane so I've got to be brief, but I wanted to check in and make it clear that "microtransactions" were not mentioned and are not what the model is about."

And also that D&D Beyond is definitely not a Virtual Game Table (VTT): "D&D Beyond is intended to enhance gameplay around a table (virtual or otherwise) - we intend this to be completely complementary and have no intention of creating a VTT."

[video=youtube;Dn8Kpmm_aJA]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dn8Kpmm_aJA[/video]

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[DEFCON 1]

I just want to say that if the program ends up being useful to me, I will happily pay for it in whatever format is required.

- I don't care how many other subscriptions I currently have, because if this saves me time and energy and is useful to me right now, then it's worth the money.

- I don't care if I've already bought the products in book form, because if this saves me time and energy and is useful to me right now, then it's worth the money.

- I don't care if I don't "own" this stuff and it potentially goes away at some future point once the game has moved onto 6E, because if this saves me time and energy and is useful to me right now, then it's worth the money.

Long story short... if it helps me run my games and the price is less than what I think my time and energy is worth if I had to do all of that work myself... then I'll pay for it happily. Same exact reason why I'd buy a WotC hardcover or a product off of DMs Guild.

 

[Oofta]

I could also see scenarios where this could save some people money. Get the free basic rules, pay for the class or two you actually want to play and you have all you need. Buying a book is optional. Paying for another service like Fantasy Grounds is optional.

I'll still buy the books (and whine that there's no official PDF version) but I really don't see what kind of pricing model people think could be implemented.

Should WOTC pay the developers? To do that they'd have to dramatically increase the price of books.

Support ongoing maintenance and development with advertising? That would be popular.

One time fee? Interesting idea, but how do you work out how much to charge? If you charge enough to to cover your ongoing costs and make a reasonable profit off of the interest from the payment (even assuming your company is set up to do that), wouldn't it be cheaper for people to pay an ongoing fee?

On top of that, WOTC still needs to make a profit (see the option above about downloading the free rules) so there's probably ongoing licensing fees they need to cover.

 

[Zaukrie]

And the poor DM, who needs all the rules? Look, I am not arguing they shouldn't make money. I am arguing that for people with other hobbies, who play some remotely, this is no cheap hobby.

Sent from my SM-G930V using Tapatalk

 

[Valdier]

In the modern software development world, and noting they are using Curse as the development provider, much of the work is likely off-shored. $50,000k for an offshore developer is pretty reasonable (if not high) in the current market. Additionally maintaining and enhancing this app isn't likely something that would require a team of developers to be working full time.

If WoTC is working off a "licensing" model with Curse, its very easy to see them taking a percentage of the subscription cost and Curse worries about the cost of development. Even at $5 a month, WoTC could take $1 from each subscriber and have an intern handle pushing data files for an offshore developer to integrate.

Modern business

 

[Valdier]

And the poor DM, who needs all the rules? Look, I am not arguing they shouldn't make money. I am arguing that for people with other hobbies, who play some remotely, this is no cheap hobby.

Sent from my SM-G930V using Tapatalk

I think this is still one of the cheapest hobbies you can participate in.

 

[Pauper]

Color me cautiously optimistic.

Here are the things I'll be keeping an eye on:

- "D&D Beyond will work without an internet connection."

What's the definition of 'work' here? I can tell you right off the top that you won't be able to buy or download content without an internet connection. With the app being described as 'web-based', it would seem that there's little need for a local repository -- except to facilitate 'offline' play, which wouldn't be possible without one. In other words, unless you can download and store data to your device in a way that the app can access without needing to 'phone home' to make sure you actually own the material you're using, your ability to 'use' the app without an internet connection will be limited at best.

This also leads into the next point:

"high quality tools available on any device"

Again, sounds good. In practice, though, this is either a web portal of some kind (which would still require some massaging to work with the various mobile vs desktop browsers out there -- recall that the 4E Character Builder couldn't be used on mobile devices because of its reliance on Microsoft Silverlight), or a 'custom' shell for each OS -- one for iOS, one for Android, etc., downloadable from the various app stores.

But if this is the route you're going, where is your local repository of data that allows you to do offline play? Perhaps the modules are implemented as JavaScript or similar 'plug-ins', similar to how Curse's existing apps work, but managing plug-ins written by other developers (and thus not being responsible for how those plug-ins interact with the OS or the original application they're written for) is a big difference from writing your own plug-ins that you are responsible for. Curse may have a dev team, but I don't know that they've ever tackled writing their own third-party plug ins rather than simply providing the 'shell' used to manage other devs' plug-ins.

And if you do decide to go 'native', producing an iOS app, an Android app, etc., that increases the overhead and the dev staff you'll need to keep up with the underlying game system. Some posters seem excited at the possibility of new books coming out with more class/feat options and the like, but having to wait until weeks after the book release for the 'D&D Beyond' implementation of those releases would not be nearly as exciting.

"flexible purchase options"

I guess 'microtransactions' is a dirty word now? If the purchase options are really going to be flexible enough so that you can buy just one class out of the PH, it doesn't seem like there's all that much difference between that and 'microtransactions'.

I wouldn't be surprised if the subscription is offered as the 'simple' option -- as long as you're a subscriber, you get access to everything, and when your sub ends, you lose access to anything you haven't paid for in a separate transaction. Sounds like there's a fair amount of resistance to that idea, though, especially given...

"A small monthly subscription will be needed to manage more than a handful of characters and to enable more advanced features"

Do the 'flexible purchase options' include the ability to buy additional 'character slots'? The downside is obvious -- if the app only allows non-subscribers to create and track a limited number of characters (hopefully using the carrot of unlimited characters as a way of enticing more people to subscribe), that's going to seriously cramp some folks' styles, especially in Adventurer's League. (I've got nearly a dozen AL characters in my own stable, and mine isn't nearly the most extensive character collection I'm aware of.)

There is a possible upside to this, though -- if the reason for limiting the number of trackable characters is that these characters are considered 'content' that's stored on Curse's servers as well as in a local repository, then that suggests it might be possible to implement a 'character vault' feature that would be very useful for AL play and similar campaigns that want to make use of data validation -- an AL vault that only allows for officially released additions to a character would make things much easier for AL DMs who don't have the time or resources to keep track of every magical item released in every AL-legal adventure.

So much of what's written is basically speculation and promises, though, that I can't fault anybody for withholding judgment until we see an actual working version of the app. Cautiously optimistic seems the way to go, for now.

--
Pauper

 

[Oofta]

And the poor DM, who needs all the rules? Look, I am not arguing they shouldn't make money. I am arguing that for people with other hobbies, who play some remotely, this is no cheap hobby.

Sent from my SM-G930V using Tapatalk

Do they? If people are using the app, the characters will be accurate. They can use the application for monsters. Magic items are optional or they can just make up stuff that makes sense.

At the worst a DM may need to buy a DMG.

If you choose to buy the books, have subscriptions to other services, it's up to you. All you really need to run a game online is skype, from what I'm seeing all you need to run a game will be a subscription to this service.

I get that people have a limited budget to spend on hobbies. I'm just saying that expecting a company to give you something for free because you already paid other companies money is silly.

 

[EthanSental]

Much like Defcon 1 said - if this saves me time and energy running the campaign, I'm in. Obsidian Portal at 4.99 a month is worth it to me and I probably have more fun posting adventure session, tavern rumors than my players have time to read. so 4.99 a month for D&D beyond falls in line with that and I'm OK with paying it, even upwards of 9.99 a month as a DM. Now of the players don't like it or that limits the use, I'l re-examine down the line but as of right now I'm excited to see this coming and only think positively about it's potential.

 

[Nylanfs]

"flexible purchase options"

I guess 'microtransactions' is a dirty word now? If the purchase options are really going to be flexible enough so that you can buy just one class out of the PH, it doesn't seem like there's all that much difference between that and 'microtransactions'.

I wouldn't be surprised if the subscription is offered as the 'simple' option -- as long as you're a subscriber, you get access to everything, and when your sub ends, you lose access to anything you haven't paid for in a separate transaction. Sounds like there's a fair amount of resistance to that idea, though, especially given...

I'm guessing that they are looking at how FG is working, you can buy just the class, or the PHB stuff.

 

[speculart]

I'm not entirely sure that starving developers doing indentured labour counts as "goodwill"!

Of course I was not suggesting devs do not get paid. I was suggesting that Wizards pick up the bill..in return for a smart way to make it easier to play the game...and buy content through the platform. I was suggesting being smart about things in the same way that roll20 do things.